Do Not Feed the Monkeys

Review

This is it! You have been accepted into the Primate Observation Club! Now don’t get too excited, it is one thing to be welcomed in the elite voyeur circle, but another to remain in it. The club will re-evaluate your performance every 5 days and you must comply to one specific rule which is . . . Do Not Feed the Monkeys!

Do Not Feed the Monkeys is a combination of a strategy/simulation and choice matter games with great pixel graphics developed by Fictiorama Studios, BadLand Games Publishing S.L. and published by Alawar Premium. In this game, you’ll be spying on people with the use of your home computer and the incredible application known as The Monkey Vision 2.1, which accesses compromised video cameras and webcams at people’s home, business and other locations.

As you launch the game, you get straight into the thick of it! There is a small tutorial for this game, but you don’t really need one, to be totally honest with you.

Most of the action will occur in your small flat. The flat has two conjoined screens, if I can describe it like that. The main one is your computer, where you’ll be spying on people by using the Monkey 2.1 application installed on your computer, receiving e-mails and chatting with people with another application named Chat Me Go. The second can be accessed by moving the mouse cursor towards the right side of your screen. There you’ll have access to a fridge, which you can stock up with food , a bed to rest in, the apartment door and a few shelves to put stuff on. If you want to go back to the computer, just move the cursor to the left of your screen to do so. You’ll be swapping from both areas constantly during the game, which is fun and difficult at the same time.

At the start of each game, you’ll only have $90 in your pocket and the landlady will come sporadically every two or three days to collect her rent, which is also $90. There are a few ways to make money; the first one is to choose one of three of daily jobs pinned on your door. Each job will have a certain amount of money you can earn and you will see how long it will take you do to the job. In some cases, it might take you up to 8 hours per job, which is 8 hours that you are losing by spying on people. It will also take down your energy gauge which can only be regenerated by taking a nap or drinking plenty of coffee. The other thing you need to be careful of at any given time is your hunger. So make sure you make enough money to buy food at the supermarket, or to order some take away. Make sure to have a balanced diet so that your health bar doesn’t decrease too quickly. You’ll receive e-mails from the club with specific tasks related to each of the individuals you are spying on. Fulfil these tasks and you be greatly rewarded.

Every 5 days, the club will re-evaluate your performance. The way they do that is to ask you to take on more cages (cameras). Your target will be to increase the number of cameras at your own cost, by 5 cameras every 5 days. Reach the third level and you’ll have 15 cameras to look at simultaneously (not all active, as you might already have solved a few cases). It will become very interesting when more then 3 cameras light up (flashing yellow light on the board) at the same time, which will mean that your camera will detect movements and you must jump and swap between then to gather as must information as possible per cage. Some cages will only have sceneries on them and you’ll have to figure out how to gather information. It is simple, to be honest; either click on an object or a dialogue highlighted in yellow. It might take you a few days to get all the information, especially with the dialogue. It is very hard to catch all the dialogue when you are swapping between several cameras. As soon as you click on these items and words, they will be automatically recorded on your notebook. From here you can search these words on the net, either by themselves or combined with other words, and see what you can dig out on the individual you are spying on. When you accumulate a certain number of words, a cycle will appear around them and you’ll be given three choices (word or sentence) and all you have to do is to choose one that relates to all the words within the circle. There are usually between 3 to 4 circles to correctly identify per cage. But that’s’ not all! At the same time, people will knock on your door, such as the postman, delivery man, or the landlady (who I keep avoiding), and others. It’s cleverly done!

Another thing that I really like is the atmosphere that surrounds your flat. You’ll be hearing babies crying, people shouting and strange noises coming from your neighbouring flat in the middle of the night while you are spying on people. Very funny.

Great pixel graphics and the soundtrack is magnificent. You’ll hear jazz, Chinese, Classical and even Arabic music. Controls are very responsive, and you’ll have your standard resolution and audio settings as well as the possibility to play this game in four languages. The game has plenty of re-playability as the cage is semi-randomised. What I mean by that is that they will come into the game in a different order each time you play another game. However, the scenario within each cage stays the same.